


ire and marrow

by majorrager



Category: Moral Orel
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Sexual Coercion, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 18:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3579519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorrager/pseuds/majorrager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As she nears the end of her education, Nursula registers at St. Martin Luther's Protestant Hospital as a temporary student nurse. She stays because it diverts the course of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ire and marrow

**Author's Note:**

> I will probably always be fascinated with Nurse Bendy and Joe and the circumstances that separated them and later brought them back together, so here's a fic that attempts to explore that from Nursula's side of things. What we saw of her in the series put a million different questions in my head, and it was an interesting experience trying to tie those inconsistent pieces of information together in this work. This is sort of a spiritual companion piece to _death's a door that love walks through_ — they reference one another very briefly, but you don't need to read the aforementioned story to understand this one.

Nursula stuns everyone who knows her, but especially herself, when she makes it far enough into her undergraduate program to arrive at the final portion, a work study. The course is mostly practical, and it's the simplest baseline there is for the career track, but she works harder than she ever has before in her life, and somehow she manages to find placement in the state capital's only hospital. No one else is assigned to St. Martin Luther's; no one else _wanted_ to be, and the clamoring to be filtered into positions elsewhere had been a vicious competition. She had scrawled her name on the sign-up list because it was the only placement option that had no names listed beneath it already, and because Moralton was the town her mother had grown up in. She thought that this might please her even if nothing else ever could, but when she phoned, speaking in a rush, letting her know that she would be completing her nursing studies in the town her mother once called home, she received only silence, followed by an inquiry as to whether or not it would be possible to change her assignment at the last minute.  
  
Her mother hadn't explained what exactly was _wrong_ with Moralton, and Nursula doesn't ask, not even when she's packing up all of her things from her dorm room, fitting brightly-colored posters and crocheted dolls and lively wind-up animals into boxes. Once, in her first year of study, she had invited a classmate she had come to call a friend over to visit. That friend had taken one look at the things Nursula held so dearly — the things that kept her feeling together, level-headed, _right_ — and smiled politely, but the next day, there were laughs and whispers, fleeting looks between classes: _I think she's some kind of fetish freak. Do you think she's got a daddy that's visiting her?_  
  
She folds her hands around a worn purple rabbit as she remembers that day and the weeks following it, running a fingertip over a sparse patch by its left eye, and thinks about a time of bruised kneecaps and an ache in her gut that wouldn't go away, thinks about all the things she has whispered into its matted fur. She feels sorry for them, but not as sorry as she feels for herself. Still, it doesn't matter now. None of them have been assigned to Moralton's hospital. She'll never have to see any of them again. There are a lot of things she'll never have to see again, and she'll be better for it.  
  
St. Martin Luther's Protestant Hospital spreads low and wide against the ground. It's an unattractive building, smaller than any other hospital she's ever seen, maybe even smaller than the nursing wing at her college. Like the town it services, it seems to see little to no action, even during a crisp fall ripe for ill-timed occurrences with the new school year. Her impression of Moralton is just the same as the conclusions she's drawn about the hospital: it is unassuming. She wonders why her mother had not wanted to speak about it; the state capital is, all in all, a very quiet place. Then she decides not to question it, because she feels tentatively happy here, unpacking her things into her brand new apartment and feeling for the first time, at nineteen years old, that maybe she has accomplished some degree of independence.  
  
On her first day at the hospital she drags her feet in her brand new shoes — they're regulation-perfect, with hard steel caps in the toes — and feels strange and unwieldy and out of place in the sterile white hallways. She is mistaken for a teenaged visitor when she goes to check in at the nurses station, and that seems to be a poor harbinger for her upcoming experience overall.  
  
When she meets Dr. Secondopinionson, she forms two observations immediately: the first is that he is precisely the cliche she would always imagine as a child when she pictured a doctor in her head: neat white coat, sharp lines carved in his face, and eyes with startling clarity. The second is that he is looking at her in the same way that most men look at her, and by the end of her first week of student nursing, she is not surprised to find herself called to his office.  
  
His accent is faintly Eastern-European, but she can't place just what or where. It's what she focuses on when he speaks, letting it melt into a hypnotizing drone as he watches at her side while she does her rounds, analyzing her work: "You are the first student nurse that St. Martin Luther's has had in a few years," was one of the first things he'd said to her, and Nursula convinces herself that that's why he's so attentive towards her, that it has to be because he's interested in facilitating her growth as a student. She manages to persuade herself that she is mostly imagining it when she finds him already looking at her every time she turns towards him.  
  
The doctor's office is on the third floor, not far from the rest of the administration area, and it smells like the powder on latex gloves. She stands by the door. He calls for her to sit, and then he smiles at her. It seems strange on his face, like it doesn't quite fit there, as though he'd made himself learn how to do it from a set of instructions.  
  
Dr. Secondopinionson unfolds a set of papers. "Let's evaluate your performance during your first week here, shall we?"  
  
Nursula isn't sure what there is to evaluate, because it's all been grunt work, shifting patients from one bed to another, changing catheters and IVs, helping with bathing. There hasn't been a single major emergency at the hospital yet. She's observed lacerations and one broken ankle. It's been simple, and she's been grateful, because even those things have felt overwhelming enough. But she doesn't contest the doctor; after all, she doesn't know the protocol. She's just a student.  
  
But he doesn't go over anything that's written on the papers. He doesn't bring up her performance, doesn't mention any particular incidents, doesn't point out any specific moments that might warrant commendation or criticism. Instead he smiles that three-step smile and says, "What made you want to become a nurse?"  
  
She remembers that a very long time ago, she had grown used to trying to make herself very small, pressing herself into corners so that she might go unseen, cowering beneath shadows that blanketed her completely and smothered her. She remembers counting the bruises on her shoulders and knees, numbering the abrasions on her body. She remembers learning to bandage herself because nobody else would. She remembers putting her stuffed animals into bed, pulling the covers up around their necks, and telling them that they would soon feel better, that it wouldn't hurt much longer because she was now there to care for them. She remembers staring up at the ceiling, sweat dripping down onto her, telling herself that it would be the last time. She remembers a soreness that ground itself deep inside her bones and would not let go.  
  
"I don't know," she says.  
  
The doctor's eyes narrow slightly. He looks thoughtful. "I became a doctor a very long time ago," he says, and that's not hard to believe. He looks ancient to her. Old enough to be her father, at the very least. Maybe even her grandfather. "I know it sounds cliché, but I wanted to help people. I find that is what everyone tends to say when asked why they chose the field of medicine..."  
  
There is a stethoscope hanging around his neck. Nursula stares at it instead of him, because he is trying very hard to look her in the eyes, and she knows exactly why. "That's right," she says finally. "I, um. I wanted to help people." It's a good enough answer, but maybe not the one he expects, because he looks vaguely disappointed. Silence follows. She folds her hands across her lap and shifts her gaze down to it. Her apron is still mostly white after a week on the job, but there's a yellowy spot where she'd dripped iodine on it yesterday. She rubs a thumb over it, wishing she could think of a way to excuse herself. When he speaks again, his voice seems far away.  
  
"Your graduation is largely dependent on my analysis at the end of your term with the hospital," he says.  
  
She knows that already. She's not very smart, but she gets that much. He is the closest thing that the hospital has to a director, and the only way she can complete her nursing program is through a glowing report by her work study supervisor. That duty falls squarely on the shoulders of the man sitting before her. She nods, and deep in her chest there is a swell of alarm as she tries to think of the right thing to say. It feels, absurdly, like a job interview. "I hope," she says finally, warbling, "I can, um, live up, up to... expectations." She has never been well-spoken, nor does she regard herself as intelligent. The fact that she is sitting before someone who is balancing her entire future on his fingertip makes her want to bury her face in her hands and give up on it right then and there. Instead, she just clenches her fists on her lap, on top of the iodine stain.  
  
"I am sure you will," the doctor says, and then: "You will."  
  
Later, when his shoulder brushes hers as she is preparing coffee in the staff room during a night shift, she tries to think nothing of it. When he invites her to his office for talk after talk, all of them about nothing at all, she tells herself that it must be because he is invested in her future. When he begins calling her by her first name, instead of Nurse Bendy, or even Miss Bendy, she tries to keep smiling. But when he closes his hand on top of hers to correct what she has written on a patient chart, she twitches violently, and he lets go immediately and walks away without another word, because it is the first time Nursula has made the mistake of showing that a boundary has been crossed. There is an echo inside of her head that rattles the memories in it like the bars on a cage, telling her that she's done something wrong.  
  
Wanting to better fit in within Moralton, she starts attending church. It is the one place she doesn't seem to run into the doctor. It is a small building that she observes with detached curiosity. It's in here that the townspeople seem to be at their friendliest, asking her where she's from and how long she's planning to stay in Moralton. They light up when she tells them that she's a nursing student, that she's finishing her education here. The other young women she meets encourage her to stick around, telling her that Moralton is exactly the kind of place any reasonable person would want to settle down in, and they even extend the hand of friendship. It's at church that she meets the coach of the local elementary school, a droopy-eyed man with a wide, flat nose. Nursula is hesitantly charmed by him, but when he introduces his fiancée to her, she withdraws. Within hours she has forgotten his name.  
  
She visits the children's ward a lot, and whenever there is an infant around she lights up and finds herself visiting the area several times a day, coming up with excuses to do so. She returns to her apartment and cradles her dolls, singing to them and walking them around her bedroom, dreaming of the day that she'll be able to manage a family of her own. It seems to be in the realm of possibility for the first time in her life. The thought of it is shaped in security, and she thinks often about it, thinks about a time when she'll be able to undo all the mistakes that have been written into her life and do right by herself.  
  
At the end of her third week at St. Martin Luther's Protestant Hospital, she is finishing a night shift, signing out at three-thirty in the morning. When she goes to collect her coat from the staff area, Dr. Secondopinionson is standing there. His appearance in the doorway startles her so much she jumps. He is holding a set of car keys, and he offers her a ride. "It's late," he says. "And it wouldn't be inconvenient for me to drop you off on my way home."  
  
Her apartment is only a few blocks away. Nursula enjoys the walk, even late at night, because Moralton feels safe, like it's a place that's been cupped protectively in the hand of some higher power. But because no one has ever listened when she has given _no_ for an answer — because _yes_ has been saturated into her — she accepts.  
  
When he drives past her apartment without stopping, something prickles in her throat, and she presses her forehead against the glass on her side of the vehicle, shutting her eyes. He's silent. For once, she'd prefer it if he wasn't. It's about ten minutes later that they pull up somewhere. She can feel the car slowing down, and so she opens her eyes. She doesn't know where they've parked. It's dark. There are a couple of streetlamps illuminating a road she doesn't recognize. There is an expanse of grass beyond it, and the lights of houses further past that. None of these things help her identify the area. She hasn't yet been in Moralton even a month; she has no chance of knowing where they are. Perhaps he knows that already.  
  
The doctor turns off the ignition, and then he sits staring straight ahead, out into the darkness. Her hands tighten in the pleats of her skirt, and she stares at his profile. In the yellowy light, he's painted in chiaroscuro, with black hollows for eyes and a slash for a mouth. It feels poignant, in a way.  
  
"I'm sorry," he says, and then he's turning towards her. He puts a hand on her knee. Nursula presses her lips together tightly, sucks in and hollows out her cheeks and tells herself that this man controls her future. The worst part, she thinks disconnectedly, is that she feels so exhausted and unclean right now; the twelve-hour shift she's just completed has her black hair hanging in a lifeless, oily way, and her makeup has mostly melted off. She stares at the leathery hand on her knee.  
  
It only ever hurts for a little while, she tells herself, just like she tells herself that every time is the last time.  
  
The doctor's other hand lifts up to her face, and his thumb spreads slow over her throat, her jaw, her lips. "You're very beautiful," he says, and his voice is strained and far away and, she feels, completely unnecessary. It's always worse when they talk.  
  
She is completely still. "I know you think I'm dumb," she says finally, but she's not sure why she's saying it, because it's not because she's trying to stand up for herself. She agrees with the sentiment. She knows that it has taken true divine intervention to get her this far. Nursula knows she's always been too slow on the uptake, too clueless about everything, always too little, too late.  
  
The doctor's fingertips pause, cupping her cheek, and he looks at her in a way that she does not understand. It isn't sympathetic, nor approving, but it isn't judgmental, either. "Don't say that," he says softly, and his hold on her shifts, cradling her chin. "My smart, beautiful girl..."  
  
It rattles out of him, raspy and deliberate, and it collapses her, and suddenly she is suppressing a sob. _Smart_ , he says, and it feels validating, somehow, feels like it's been something she's been waiting to hear her entire life. The worst part is that she knows it's completely untrue, but that doesn't even seem to matter, because for once she feels as if she needs to understand what is wanted of her, needs it to be more than just _You're so beautiful_. "You mean that?" she asks, her voice thick, thinking _Please, please_ , and then she melts into his touch, turning her cheek against his hand and feeling the warmth radiate off of it.  
  
"Of course," says the doctor, and his fingers spread beneath her earlobe, touching lightly into the hairs at the nape of her neck. "Of course."  
  
This time, when the shadow moves above her, it's almost easy to suppress the sickness. Almost.  
  
When she meets him in his office after that, it's no longer to have directionless conversations about the field of medicine. She knows exactly why she is being called there, and it becomes routine. She grips at his desk and lets him tell her that she's smart, that she's beautiful, that she is so lovely, and those words pouring over her are what keep her coming back. She lets him make promises to her that someday they may be able to be more, and after a while she comes to believe him. Her steps grow lighter even as the pressure in her chest and head and heart swells to bursting point. Soon she is visiting him of her own accord, without being summoned, and at the end of the day the dolls in her room go unattended to, ignored in the face of the changes in her life. Once, she even manages to feel pleasure. It is such an unusual experience that it startles and frightens her, and by the time he soothes her, it has gone, and she feels better for it.  
  
At church one Sunday, Coach Fakey offers her an invitation to his wedding. The way he smiles at her still makes her uneasy, but not in the way it did before. When Nursula returns to the hospital, she tells the doctor about the wedding, and he laughs so warmly that it brightens her entire day, and, slowly, wariness melts away. In its place is a thick, dreamy state that has her floating.  
  
It doesn't last. Nothing ever does; there have never been any constants in Nursula's life. In that manner, there are no surprises. Three months later, she is staring down into a positive pregnancy test. She had read the instructions over four times; as simple as they were, they still confused her. Even now, she is rereading the sheet, comparing the symbols, seeing over and over that she is pregnant and still not understanding the suddenly contorted shape of her new reality.  
  
There are only a handful of places she has imagined her life going. Nineteen years old and pregnant is not one of them.  
  
But maybe, she thinks, maybe this is divine intervention again. Maybe this has happened for a reason. She curls her hands over her stomach and thinks about a baby with her black hair and the doctor's dark eyes and the thought of it has her in tears, and she swings her teddy bears around the room and sings a lullaby to each of them, one by one.  
  
The doctor doesn't agree about divine intervention, or anything else about the development. When she tells him the news the day after, standing in his office pale but tentatively excited, the first thing he says is, "There is a clinic in Sinville."  
  
The bottom of her stomach drops out like a trap door. "I don't," she says, and it feels like she is floating above her own body, watching this conversation happen, "I don't want to. Don't make me."  
  
If he is taken aback by her sudden willingness to say _no_ , he doesn't show it. "No one has to know," he says. "I will take you there, and I will pay for everything, and no one will ever know." She shrivels back beneath his gaze.  
  
His hands have been heartbreakingly soft on her these past few months, and she wishes he would reach out to her now, pull her close and tell her that it will work out, that she is his smart, beautiful girl, his light, and that he will take care of her. He has said all of those things many times before. Not now, though. Now he looks at her the same way he looks at the doctor with the round-wire frames who follows him around the hospital floors nattering on about God's will: it's a condescending disdain.  
  
"We can get married." Her voice comes out small and unimportant-sounding, straining hard behind the last two syllables, and immediately she wishes she hadn't said it.  
  
It doesn't make any difference, though, because he doesn't even acknowledge it. "You can't take care of a baby," he says plainly, looking down at her in a way that makes her feel like she isn't even a person. He turns to arrange the books on his shelf, as though it is an absorbing task that must be seen to immediately, one that she has rudely interrupted. "You haven't finished your education. You have no independence, no experience, and no means to care for a child."  
  
She folds her arms across her body, staring at him, gripped by numbness. He is correct on all points, even if she doesn't want him to be. "Yes," she says finally, blankly.  
  
"You're young," he says, and his voice softens; for a moment her knees go weak, and she wants to press herself to him, desperate to be held in the way she has become familiar with. The only way that has ever felt safe to her. But then his voice strengthens again, and the detached edge is back, serrated and hard. "Will you not consider the clinic?"  
  
She thinks of black hair and dark eyes, and she knows she can't do it. She shakes her head: _No._  
  
The doctor adjusts his coat, as if he is already thinking of better places he has to be, before he says something that strikes her cold. "I can raise it with my daughter."  
  
"You have a daughter." Her mind has gone blank with disbelief. The sentence comes out sounding robotic.  
  
"Posie is eleven." He looks as though he has already lost interest in the conversation. Nursula closes her hand over her mouth. Her eyes sting. She wants to fade away into the wallpaper. He seems to notice this, because he says, "It's about your future, Nursula." And then, "Please think about it."  
  
She does think about it. She thinks about it every single hour of every single day for the next several months. She thinks about it as her stomach swells and her skin distends over it in ugly ways. She thinks about it when the doctor stops touching her, stops even looking at her. She thinks about it when she runs her hands over the marks on her abdomen and counts them out red and jagged like lightning bolts spreading over her sides. She thinks about it when the coach whose name she still has trouble remembering gives her a double-take when he sees her on the street in a loose coat that does nothing to hide her changing body, passing by holding hands with his new wife. She thinks about it when she hears the baby's heartbeat for the first time.  
  
She makes up her mind.  
  
Her graduation coincides with the baby's due date, and for that reason, she isn't be able to attend. Dr. Secondopinionson has written her a glowing review, and with it has secured her future. That is his gift to her. The baby will be her gift to him, even if he doesn't actually want it and she doesn't want to give it away. The graduation feels like it should be important to her, but she can't bring herself to feel anything about it at all. Her classmates will be celebrating as she has the child she won't ever be able to care for. After that, life is going to be predictable. She has already been hired at St. Martin Luther's. All she has to do is continue the routine she has already established. Moralton is, as the townspeople were happy to tell her so many months ago, exactly the right kind of place to settle down in.  
  
Nursula goes to the hospital for the first time not to go on shift but to check in as a patient. Before she heads there she pauses in front of her bathroom mirror, studying her face. Her eyes are red and puffy. She pours concealer onto her hands and begins smearing it onto her skin. She wipes tears up with the makeup, smooths everything over, blends it into the dark circles. Her lipstick is immaculate when the people she's come to know as coworkers settle her in, and it nearly feels as though she knows what she's doing. It almost feels like she's alright with it all.  
  
The baby's hair is dark and downy, clinging damply to his small, pale forehead, and his eyes are deep brown wells. She is overwhelmed by his smallness as she clutches him in the hospital bed, weak and exhausted and aching. The smell of him is sweet and earthy, and when she runs a fingertip against his cheek where it's resting against her chest she knows that she will never, ever be alright with her decision. There is the silhouette of someone in the doorway that night, staring at her. He doesn't linger long, but he is present the day after when the paperwork is sorted out. She asks him to pick the baby's name, because she knows she can't do it, can't name what she can never know. He chooses Joseph.  
  
When she lets go of him, she can't even bring herself to cry. He has passed through her, like many others have before. She had had him for what felt like a single second, and then she'd blinked, and he was gone.  
  
She receives her diploma in the mail a month later. That day, she walks to the convenience store and goes straight to the hair care aisle. Later that night she keeps the bleach in until it burns her scalp and makes it hurt, and when she washes it out, her hair has turned a buttery color and she can barely recognize herself in the mirror. A week later, the new school year has already begun, and they are looking for a nurse to fill in during spare hours. She is surprised to find that Coach Fakey has become Principal Fakey, and he is the one who meets her when she heads to the office to apply. When she interviews for the position and he looks at her with a hunger in his eyes, she decides to shut herself down and accept it. Much, much later, when he is cooing _I love you_ at her like a mantra, shadow sobbing above her, she stares up at the ceiling and thinks about what color she wants to paint her nails next.  
  
She watches Joseph — Joe — grow up in her peripheral vision. She sees him grow from a small, puffy baby to a sturdy toddler and then a hardy child. Dr. Secondopinionson largely goes into retirement the year Joe turns three, when he begins developing health problems. He barely acknowledges her by the end of his tenure, and by Joe's fourth birthday he looks like he's aged by about fifteen years. It startles her when he fails to recognize her on the street. His teenaged daughter gives her a wary look and guides her father away quickly.  
  
When Joe is five, she begins calling the residence, and she becomes used to Posie's nasally voice telling her every time that the doctor is not available to talk. When Joe is six, Nursula brings a new bear home for her collection, and she cuddles him close to her chest and names him Sonny, but when she sits around the dinner table with him and the one she's come to call Hubby, she knows she's not fooling herself, especially not when she's sitting alone in her apartment, trembling in the dark because she feels so utterly alone and lost and she's sure, by now, that no one is ever going to try to find her.  
  
When Joe is eight, the doctor and his daughter pack up and leave with him seemingly out of nowhere. They stay gone for three years doing God knows what, and during that time she calls their new residence nearly every single day; eventually Posie stops answering, and Nursula's visits with Sonny and Hubby turn into an obsessive lifestyle. They move back when Joe is eleven, and by that time he's become a young man; the change in him is startling, and for some reason he looks miserable every time she catches a glimpse of him. She starts dressing Sonny in black.  
  
When Joe is twelve, he finds her, and he doesn't let her lose him again. That year they discover one another for the first time, and it's the happiest she's ever been in her entire life. It's a sort of joy she never even knew existed, and it's so boundless and overwhelming that she frequently cries just because she's so grateful. A strength begins to grow in her, tangling its roots into her soul and bursting outward. When Joe is thirteen, she gains custody and breaks things off with Fakey permanently. When Joe is fourteen, they upgrade to a condominium, and before unboxing any of their possessions they dance together in the empty living room, laughing and laughing, Joe's bright smile lighting up the room.  
  
When Joe is sixteen, his father's Alzheimer's disease has regressed to a bad enough state that his visits reduce in frequency to just a handful of times per year. She is selfishly glad for it. When he is seventeen, he comes home from one of those visits with bitterness in his eyes, and he tells her that if it ever gets to a point where his father can't remember who he is, he's never going to visit again. She remembers the words _You were the first thing he forgot_ , and she can't even make herself feel sorry for the old man.  
  
When Joe is nineteen, he is involved in a very serious car accident and is hospitalized for a while. She demands to be able to care for him, crossing her duties and obligations, and she is at his side constantly, too grateful that he is alive to even weep over what had happened. Two months later, the doctor passes away, and this time she _does_ cry for all of the questions she'd never gotten to ask, all of the years she'd lost, the loneliness that had nearly killed her, and Joe holds her. He attends the service but not the burial, and he understands when she doesn't attend either one. The malaise fades away on the day of the burial, and in its place is a sense of bone-melting relief when she realizes that she has everything she could ever have wanted now, and none of those things would ever have come to her without the pain that had preceded them.  
  
A month later, they pick up some cardboard boxes and pack up all of the things that have been collecting dust in their home, things she hasn't needed for years but hasn't been able to throw away. Nearly everything in the storage space goes into the boxes- all of the childish things she had held onto for so long and built her dreams around. Sonny's long gone, but the dollhouse goes into a box, along with the paper butterflies, the wind-up puppets, the posters, the brightly colored plush animals. Joe seals them all up tight with duct tape and loads them all into the back of his new truck, and when they're done packing, he hugs her, and she feels whole and clean.  
  
They start a bonfire with the boxes in the town junkyard that night, both of them bright but nervous about being caught. Joe piles them up all together and coats them in gasoline, along with a great deal of paper waste that he cuts free of recycling bags and throws around in handfuls. The weather is segueing into fall, and there's a chill in the air. It feels a lot like the night she'd walked into St. Martin Luther's Protestant Hospital for the first time nearly two decades ago, when she'd been the age that Joe is now, not knowing then how her time in that hospital would completely inform her future. She turns to look at Joe, waiting for his encouraging smile, before she faces the boxes and strikes the match that sets them all ablaze. The flames climb the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, critique, questions— all are encouraged and appreciated.


End file.
